


The Man from My Dreams

by miamam



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dreams, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 12:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4305393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miamam/pseuds/miamam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two men dreaming the same dream. Two lonely souls, finding solace in each other through the same dream, seeing beauty somewhere they wouldn't expect it. Sherlock. And John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man from My Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PharLap Cartoonist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=PharLap+Cartoonist).
  * A translation of [Muž z mých snů](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/127383) by PharLap. 



> This piece of work exists thanks to amazing PharLap (Cartoonist), who wrote it in Czech at first and then asked me to translate it to English, and I happily obliged. I love the original story and I really pushed myself to preserve the dreamy mood.  
> I had a help from my awesome beta kalerme, who eliminated the amount of blunders, as English isn't my first language. However, if you are English and you see some dreadful mistakes left, feel free to let me know ;-).

*** John ***

 

Do you know that feeling when you dream the same dream all over again? When you feel this fatality or, if you like, a feeling that you should've done something but you didn't? When you’ve got this gut feeling that something is wrong and you’re the one to change it?

Well, this is just what I’ve been experiencing recently. I’m in war and so sometimes I don’t sleep at all and the nights I do, they’re eerily dreamless. But when I am lucky and can sleep in relative peace, I have only one dream, always the same one.

 

In my dream, I see a boy, or rather a young man – he can’t be that much younger than me, but he’s definitely taller – wearing a shabby sweatshirt and tightly fitted jeans embracing his slender hips. His head is bent forward, most of his face is hidden behind long black curls, but even those can’t hide his piercing icy blue eyes glowing from his pale face like diamonds, embroidering nape of some wealthy lady. I’ve never seen anything like it before...

Softly shaped lips, as if they were kneaded by deft fingers of an old master of smooth clay. They perfectly complete his firm yet quite shaken look of his face. As if he’s been looking for something for a long time, and hasn’t found it yet. He looks youthful, but his face and his eyes in particular can tell he’s witnessed something inconcievable. Perhaps his life hasn’t been easy so far, maybe the fate toys with him like a wind tosses the straws, but he’s beginning to break. He’s been ruining himself.

There are several traces made by injection just below his rolled up sleeve of his sweatshirt, once expensive. They’re neat. Meticulous.

 

He’s approaching me now. Slowly but surely.

His scrutiny is hypnotizing. As soon as he‘s staying before me, he sinks on his knees. He kneels for a while, looking in my eyes, but then he bows his head and starts to cry. He’s weeping almost soundlessly, deeply, it’s heart-breaking. As if he’s been holding it back for years, even his whole life. And so I bend forward and hug him. It seems to be the only thing I should do. He embosoms me tightly, but he just can’t stop wheeping. It’s like I’ve just met him for the first time, and yet known him for ages. Slowly, he stops crying and he sags down to my arms. He disappears whenever I want to leave him, and then I’m in an empty room, alone. Alone and lost.

Every time I have this dream, he kneels in front of me and he needs help, but I don’t have a thing to  give, nor do I know how to help him in the first place. And so I constantly disappoint him and loose him, again and again. The only thing that remains is my feeling of guilt and this yearning of being able to change something. To make something right. To redress an ancient injustice to someone who’s still in pain and grief because of it. Like it was an old scar.

Maybe it’s this young man from my dreams. It hurts me to see him like this. Desperation dimmed by sorrow, hammered in the heart of Victorian marble statue.

He’s beautiful, actually. I don’t mean him, in those old shabby clothes and in this state, but somewhere deep in his eyes, there’s good. Hidden deep behind the curtain which he’s been creating so eagerly. Not that kind of pretended good worn by smiling masks, dissimulating cunning and lies to reach its own selfish goals; but that kind of true, genuine good of a man who’s willing to sacrifice his own life for things he believes in. The man who pretends to be a tin soldier, and yet, in his chest, there is beating the finest heart what a man can have. A hero of ancient times, attired in black armour.

Seeing his sharp cheekbones in his long face, one would believe he’s a witness of something transcendental. A shy faun imprisoned in the wrong body and time. Soft lips, perhaps better fitting to an exotic girl, predestined to being kissed: slowly and softly, or with fierceness and fire in your heart. Festoon of black glossy hair, just luring to bury your fingers in it and leave it fall gently as soft satin. His skin, wet with tears, smells like rain and wind and see and adventures, for which he’s been craving from his childhood. A soul of a little boy in a body much bigger than he’s supposed to have. His head must be full of foolish thoughts of pirates and astronauts and whatnot.

 

I think about it when I wake up. It has to have some purpose, some reason.

I don’t believe in God, but I do believe there’s something between heaven and earth, that we all have some kind of mission, aquest. And so I believe this has a purpose. There must be something in it why I dream about a young man lost in time. About someone whom I bring peace. Who’s waiting for me to get back, to find him and help him. Is he still waiting, or did I missed my chance? What if I’m going mad? I don’t know, but I know one thing for sure. If this man exists and he’s waiting for me, I’ll find him and I won’t leave him. I can feel it’s supposed to be this way. It might sound just a tad crazy but I feel our lives are going to encounter, and soon. Before the day comes, my dreams will be full of a young man with icy eyes and softly shaped lips and he’ll finally manage to find the thing he’s looking for.

 

 

 

 

*** Sherlock ***

 

The things a human brain is able to achieve are amazing. For instance: dreams. It’s scientifically proven that experience and stimuli of the last day make appearance in our dreams, but this fact doesn’t explain my dreams whatsoever. They recur. Not that I had several of them; it’s just that one, and one only, replaces them all.

 

I dream about a man in an army uniform. He just stands there, looking round, but then he notices me. I walk straight to him but my legs are oddly unruly and they buckle every time I reach him and I kneel. He’s short, that much that my head reaches his waist level.

I look at his face. He’s got such incredible eyes. They’re blue as a stormy sea and just as wild, but at the same time, they’re glowing with warmth of the sun setting in summer, caressing the cooling ground with its beams. His face is all courage, and yet, the wrinkles near his thin lips prove he’s used to laughing. I’m sure he’s got a beautiful smile. Cute nose, big ears and shaggy sandy-coloured hair make an impression you’ve met a hedgehog and not a man able to kill.

 

He’s so very little, his helmet is rather hanging on his head than embracing it firmly, but the rest of his uniform compensates this impression of a boy in a dad’s hat completely.

The clothes obtained from an army deposit may hide this little man’s worth on purpose, and his slightly open jacket barely uncovers what he conceals. Nevertheless, it’s his eyes, not his soya-milk coloured skin and the lips carved out of butter, that fascinate me. One would love to drown in them on the first arising occasion. In the case you got in wrong with their owner, you would let them convulse you and kill you with the first lightning. It’s absolutely dreadful how quickly my otherwise cold contemplation changed to sloppy sentiment. The joy of lovers, the perdition of warriors.

 

I’m kneeling and I bow my head. I can’t stand another look of those eyes, whose owner I’ll never have; I’m breaking. It isn’t difficult to hide my feelings at most times, but I’m not capable of it while facing him.

I start to cry. There’s no reason for it, but just like that, I need to. It’s as if a desert has been watered. I haven’t cried for such a long, long time...

He bends over and hugs me. Suddenly, he has no helmet, so instead of its buckle, I can feel his chin on the top of my head.

It’s wonderful.

His skin smells of sweat, dust, sun, and desert. It is so very different from anything I know, from anything I’ve ever learnt. In this moment, I’ve got a feeling of finality. As if everything was just the way it should be. I’d love to be just right here and right now. I’d die and never wake up for the chance of lying in his arms. It’s all so eerily real that I’m starting to get a feeling it isn’t merely a wish but I actually died and this is heaven. It never occurred to me it would look like this, but if it exists, it looks just like that.

 

I suspect he wants to leave. He shuffles a bit and gives me a peck. Maybe he doesn’t even know he did that... And then, I’m alone. It seems he’s never been here and the room is empty and dark again. That is, if it is some kind of room in the first place. There is nothing and the walls cannot be seen; well, I can’t see them. The only light left has disappeared, and I’m alone in the darkness.

 

I can feel the drug running through my veins. The drug, promising pleasure to me; but how could it be anything better compared to this? Treacherous bitch with tempting lips. Those who haven’t met the soldier cannot possibly know what the love is. Even I didn’t know that. Whoever tells that love at the first sight is blind, do consider your words again. I fell in love with the first _dream_. I engaged my heart with the first meeting of an angel in uniform, thus I have none now. It beats in the chest closest to his own. Attuning the breath and beat in one until there’s no difference, just the one vociferous ticking of big clock.

 

 It chimes. And when our time runs out, the time will end. His and mine, both.

 

A hand in a hand. To be as closest, as possible. To feel his warm palms and velvet lips, to taste him. That would be an amazing experiment. To know love and lust and desire, certain as breath, as the day and the night. I can feel it inside me and it satisfies me, until there’s no reason to take drugs. They’re nothing in comparison with all this, with his breath on my skin and smell of his body. I yearn to deserve his love.

I will stop taking drugs and I will find him. That would be my mission. I’ll find the soldier from my dreams.

The angel with a gun.

 

 

 


End file.
